YOU probably won’t appreciate this if Kauto Star was the horse who got you interested in racing, or if you didn’t once (and don’t secretly still) marvel at the magic of a fax machine, but there was a time when today’s meeting at Chepstow signalled the start of the (televised) National Hunt season.

The Mercedes Benz meeting. The BBC cameras rolled into Wales, and it was the first time that you saw a horse jumping a fence on television since you had watched the Galway Plate from your kitchen. Today’s Chepstow meeting has retained its stature as a significant meeting in recent years. Cue Card won the listed novices’ chase in 2011 and Balder Succes won it in 2013, and Cocktails At Dawn beat As De Mee and Native River and Blaklion and Regal Encore in 2015, and Rock The Kasbah beat Our Kaempfer and Theinval and Clan Des Obeaux in it last year.